EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 307 
it page by page to my mind and judge it more 
impartially when my manuscript is out of the 
way. The distraction of surveying enables me 
rapidly to take new points of view. A day or 
two of surveying is equal to a journey. 
Some poets mature early and die young. 
Their fruits have a delicious flavor like straw¬ 
berries, but do not keep till fall or winter. 
Others are slower in coming to their growth. 
Their fruits may be less delicious, but are a 
more lasting food, and are so hardened by the 
sun of summer and the coolness of autumn that 
they keep sound over winter. 
April 8, 1859. As I stood by the foot of a 
middling-sized white pine the other day, on 
Fair Haven hill, one of the very windy days, I 
felt the ground rise and fall under my feet, be¬ 
ing lifted by the roots of the pine, which was 
waving in the wind, so loosely are they planted. 
. . . . What a pitiful business is the fur trade, 
which has been pursued now for so many ages, 
for so many years, by famous companies, which 
enjoy a profitable monopoly, and control a large 
part of the earth’s surface. Unweariedly they 
pursue and ferret out small animals by the aid 
of all the loafing class, tempted by rum and 
money, that they may rob some little fellow- 
creature of its coat to adorn or thicken then- 
own, that they may get a fashionable covering 
